Speed
Speed Card Builds There are many uses for speed cards, but the 2 main uses are: #Trailing #Demo escort Trailing Speed Card A trailing speed card is built completely with speed in mind. A good trailing card would have a high maximum speed stat and its ability will also have Speed Up. The main purpose of speed cards is to travel from you fort or castle to a new destination as quickly as possible. For example: to capture a tile during battles with other guilds, making a trail/path towards a dark lord fort/citadel/castle, or heading towards an enemy guild's HQ. The best speed gain skills (help the single card) are, in decending order: #Drive Gain (SR) #Move Gain ® #Step Gain (UC) #Walk Gain © Demo Escort A Demo Escort card is built with speed and demo support in mind. These cards should have a high maximum speed stat with a Speed Up ability and/or a Starting skill that increases the speed stat. The purpose of these cards are to boost the overall average speed of the Demo Card but also buff its Demolition stat at the same time using a combination of Speed Force or Gain skills and Demo Force skills. See images below for and example of a Demo Escort. The best speed force cards (help the whole 3 card unit) are similar to the gain cards, in descending order: The best Demo Force skills (help all demo cards in unit) in descending order, are: #Destroy Force #Scrap Force #Break Force #Crush Force What To Look For No matter what type of speed card you want to build there are two main things that you need to look for. The base speed that a card comes with, and an ability of "Speed Up Lvl. ??" The speed up skills can range from level 1 to 8 (nobody seems to have seen 9s, but we hope they are out there). This skill effectively bumps your base skill by the amount of the level up. So if you find a base 14 speed card with a speed up level 3 ability, your starting speed will be 17 instead of 14. As with all cards, as you fuse other cards into them their basic stats increase to their maximum, speed included. When you are starting out, the best pure speed cards to work on are commons like the Bat or Harpy which have a starting skill of walk gain. The best demo escort cards are rares like a Kodama which have a starting skill of step force. So watch for these cards with a speed up ability. Every time you find one, lock the card so you don't fuse it away. Specific cards/skills that you need to watch for are: *Any cards with Attack/Strike Gain which will fuse Walk Gain or Step Gain *Sleipnir *Baby Dragon (fuses Move Gain) *Sky Knight (main skill is Drive Gain and fuses Drive Gain but is also a very fast card, even without a speed up ability) *Cards with Seraph Feather fuse Drive Gain, as do cards with Verdant Aura (but you may want these for other uses) How To Build It can be easy to get overwhelmed by all the complexities of the game, so when you are starting out, the KISS principle applies. Keep It Simple Stupid!! While it is recommended to keep any card mentioned above with a speed up ability, it's simpler to only work on 1 or 2 at a time until you're more comfortable in the game. Just save the others for later. 'Stack' Skills To Save On SP Requirements Fusing requires the use of SP (see fusing) and any way that you can reduce how much SP you need to use is beneficial to your cards in the long run. If you run out of sp, you have to sell cards to get more, or get sp from quests, or rewards from capturing dark lord forts/citadels/castles. 'Stacking' a skill is simply fusing two cards with the same level 1 skill together to make 1 card with that skill at level 2. This is the most efficient stack for our purposes right now. So, as you are drawing from the lotto lite, you'll end up with many bats and harpys. Each time you get 2 bats (without a speed up ability) fuse 2 together and feed them to your bat with its speed up skill/s. Stacking can get more complicated, but leave it at that for now until you learn more about fusing. Good skills for building speed cards that are relatively easy to level are walk gain and step gain. There are only a few cards that come with either as it's starting skill, but there are more cards that you can 'skill fuse' to get them. For example, a card with Strike Gain can skill fuse Step Gain onto another card which you can then feed to your speed card (after you first give it step gain). Any card with Attack Gain can fuse Walk Gain using the method above. Move gain and Drive gain are much more difficult to get and to level. Work on one card at a time if you start to use these skills. If you still need help just ask. Richter's Guide to Speed Cards Disclaimer: These are my personal opinions, and haven't been vetted by the community. They're based on my experiences mostly from trailing to several different castles/citadels. However, I would encourage anyone with different opinions to make any corrections or add any comments. I suggest building different types of speed cards, each used for a different purpose: * Cards to take r1 tiles at any distance, or nearby r2 tiles * Cards to take r2 tiles or nearby r3 tiles * Cards to take distant r3 tiles * Cards to escort demo * Other / miscellaneous You want two of each type, at least for the first 3 or 4 types. The reason for using different types for different tile ranks is that, if you're trailing, you want to use the same cards repeatedly. This means the cards can't take significant damage when taking the tiles; otherwise after several captures they'll fall below the %HP threshold for placing them into a unit. So you have to make sure the card is strong enough to single-handedly capture the tile in the first round or two of combat. There are other skills such as Drive Gain that are obtainable from SR cards, but I prefer to use the SR cards for other purposes. You can build fast (40+) speed cards without resorting to SR cards, and keep in mind that level 10 Walk Gain is faster than level 1 Drive Gain. If you ever get to the point where you find yourself swimming in SR cards, it might be worth it to use a couple of them to improve your speed cards, but until then I'd recommend sticking with skills from C, UC, and R cards. Cards with a base 14 speed (before abilities) are potential candidates for speed cards. To really be considered, the card should have a bonus to speed, preferably +3 (i.e., a "Speed Up Lv.3" ability) or higher. There are one or two exceptions as noted below, but this is a good rule of thumb. The fastest speed cards are obviously those with a primary skill that provides a speed increase. There are only a few such cards: Bat, Harpy, Kodama, and Sky Knight. Which card to use, and which skills to place on it, depend on the type of speed card you want to create: 'Attacking Tiles' R1 Tiles: '''The cards for taking R1 tiles are pure speed cards, ie, the fastest single cards you can make. My preferred card is a Bat or Harpy with +3 or higher speed. The ideal card is, of course, a Sky Knight with a +speed ability, but few of us are lucky enough to draw one; a +4 speed Bat or Harpy is ideal also, but again extremely rare. If you can’t get a Bat or Harpy with +3 speed, look for one with +2 speed, or even +1; these'll usually appear from Lotto Lite even at the beginning of a game cycle. Given a choice, I prefer Bats over Harpys, simply because Bats have a lower cost and are therefore a little more versatile. '''R2 Tiles: For taking R2 tiles, I use Rare cards with base 14 speed, an AOE attack skill, and at least a +3 speed ability. Examples include Storm Wing, Gryphon, and Sphinx. For the 2nd and 3rd skills, I use Walk Gain (leveled to 10) and Step Gain. One of these can take out an R2 tile from 20+ tiles away without suffering any significant damage. R3 Tiles: I personally use a maxxed (non-limit-broken) Flame Rider for taking distant R3 tiles. Flame Riders are cost 6 UR cards with a good AOE attack, base 15 speed (the highest in the game), and an ability that gives +2.5 speed. They are not great as tk or duel cards, but they are excellent speed cards. I place Attack Rise or Strike Rise as one skill, and Step Gain as the other skill. Two Flame Riders together can take out a Wind r4 from a fair distance away. If you don’t have any Flame Riders (they were given out for free in w4), Thunderbirds with their cost 7, speed 14, and "Attack Up" abilities are a good alternative, albeit a bit slower. 'Demo Escort' Bats and Harpys are good escorts as usual, but +speed Kodama’s make excellent escorts as well (Kodama’s have Step Force as their primary skill; since the “Force” skills provide a unit speed bonus, this skill is much more useful for cards designed to escort other cards; it's less useful for units comprised of a single speed card). I actually have two kinds of demo escorts: one with 1 demo skill and 2 speed skills; and the other with 2 demo skills and 1 speed skill. For the first kind, I have a Kodama and a Bat each with Break Force and Step Gain. For the second kind, I use a Bat with Break Force and Crush Force. Which kind to use depends on the situation. If you only have one demo escort, I'd recommend 2 demo skills and 1 speed skill, although either way is good. 'Speed Skills' The skills I prefer for pure speed cards are Walk Gain, Step Gain, and Move Gain: * Walk Gain: Easily obtainable from the multitude of bats and harpys drawn from Lotto Lite, this skill is easy to get to lvl10, where it provides a 23% increase in speed. It’s also fusable from any of the Commons with Attack Gain, but I find this to be too much of a bother; you can level Walk Gain to level 10 just from fusing Bats and Harpys. * Step Gain: Also relatively easy to get, this skill is obtainable from any UC with Strike Gain as its primary skill, as well as from Sleipnir. Leveling to 10 is not as easy, but it's not difficult to get reasonably high levels of this skill as well. * Move Gain: This is only obtainable from ® Baby Dragon, so it is difficult to come by and hard to level. However, if you do draw a Baby Dragon, there's really no use for it other than to fuse Move Gain. If you are unlucky or don’t have enough (or any) Baby Dragons to use, Walk Force or Step Force are decent alternatives, as those can be leveled to reasonably high levels. Note: thanks to "a wikia contributer" for pointing out that Move Gain is also obtainable from Rare cards with Assault Gain as their primary skill, which means you can get it from Flame Warlock and Storm Knight as well as Baby Dragon. This makes it a little easier, although these cards are also valuable as fusion material for TK cards, so it's a matter of personal taste whether you want to use the cards for Move Gain or for Assault Gain. 'Other/Miscellaneous' There may be rare occasions when you need to escort tk or duel cards with a speed card in order to meet a certain timeline. When this happens, it might be nice to have a speed card with Strike Force; the Strike Force adds a little extra power to the attack value of the tk/duel cards (not much, but every little bit helps). I'd recommend Step Gain as the 3rd skill; it's relatively easy to level and, if you're using a Kodama and have a choice between Step Gain and Walk Gain, Step Gain is faster at the levels you're likely to reach. For pure speed escorts, a card with 2 "Gain" skills and one unit-based "Force" skill (e.g., a Bat, Harpy, or Kodama with Walk Gain, Step Gain and Walk/Step Force) may actually be a faster escort than a pure speed card with three "Gain" skills. Final thoughts Run your speed cards through mana and gold dungeons every chance you get, until the speed value has reached its limit. Mana and gold dungeons don’t add much to attack value and HP, so you don’t get a lot of value from running your tk/duel cards through them. However, the speed bonus is better, so speed cards should be your preferred choice for cards to run through mana/gold dungeons.When fusing, I personally tend to fuse Bats into other Bats and Harpys into rare cards (Storm Wing, Grypyon, Thunderbird, etc.). This is only because of the cost; Harpys tend to give a slightly better increase to a card’s stats, which is usually wasted on a Bat. When trailing, you typically don't need to take any tiles higher than r3. In fact, for the most part you can take just r1 and r2 tiles, taking r3 tiles only when there's no good alternative. For r4 tiles and higher, speed cards may not be the best choice. You can use two or more speed cards to take an r4 tile if necessary, but they will take damage, and they may be out of commission for a while. Immune cards and/or duel cards are usually the better option.